Media Scholarship in a Transitional Age honors the significant and lasting contribution that Pamela J. Shoemaker has made to mass communications research. Her body of work, spanning four decades, has included groundbreaking conceptual and methodological advances, particularly in the areas of gatekeeping, survey research and content analysis. The chapters in this collection build upon her legacy in both theory and method, and particularly in the area of news research. At the heart of the book are chapters that apply concepts found in Shoemaker's earliest work, such as deviance and newsworthiness, and extend theories such as gatekeeping and agenda-setting into the digital era. Empirical analyses on topics such as international and political news provide insights into journalism in these transitional times. Additional chapters explore digital media and the "mediated method." The closing section, Reflections on the Transitional Age, includes two chapters that pay homage to Shoemaker's contributions through discussion of the importance of theory and research from a personal perspective. The final chapter challenges academics to consider the implications of the digital era for scholarly creativity. A collection with wide appeal to all media scholars, Media Scholarship in a Transitional Age is particularly well-suited to graduate student seminars on mass communications theory, media sociology and news scholarship.

Media Scholarship in a Transitional Age honors the significant and lasting contribution that Pamela J. Shoemaker has made to mass communications research. Her body of work, spanning four decades, has included groundbreaking conceptual and methodological advances, particularly in the areas of gatekeeping, survey research and content analysis. The chapters in this collection build upon her legacy in both theory and method, and particularly in the area of news research. At the heart of the book are chapters that apply concepts found in Shoemaker's earliest work, such as deviance and newsworthiness, and extend theories such as gatekeeping and agenda-setting into the digital era. Empirical analyses on topics such as international and political news provide insights into journalism in these transitional times. Additional chapters explore digital media and the "mediated method." The closing section, Reflections on the Transitional Age, includes two chapters that pay homage to Shoemaker's contributions through discussion of the importance of theory and research from a personal perspective. The final chapter challenges academics to consider the implications of the digital era for scholarly creativity. A collection with wide appeal to all media scholars, Media Scholarship in a Transitional Age is particularly well-suited to graduate student seminars on mass communications theory, media sociology and news scholarship.

This volume sets out the state-of-the-art in the discipline of journalism at a time in which the practice and profession of journalism is in serious flux. While journalism is still anchored to its history, change is infecting the field. The profession, and the scholars who study it, are reconceptualizing what journalism is in a time when journalists no longer monopolize the means for spreading the news. Here, journalism is explored as a social practice, as an institution, and as memory. The roles, epistemologies, and ethics of the field are evolving. With this in mind, the volume revisits classic theories of journalism, such as gatekeeping and agenda-setting, but also opens up new avenues of theorizing by broadening the scope of inquiry into an expanded journalism ecology, which now includes citizen journalism, documentaries, and lifestyle journalism, and by tapping the insights of other disciplines, such as geography, economics, and psychology. The volume is a go-to map of the field for students and scholars-highlighting emerging issues, enduring themes, revitalized theories, and fresh conceptualizations of journalism.